Re: echo but return false in make (was: Logfiles from build)

[Graham Percival]

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 07:35:19PM +0100, Graham Percival wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 02:18:55PM -0400, Julien Rioux wrote:
> > On 17/06/2011 2:11 PM, Graham Percival wrote:
> > >  make ...blah... || echo "build failed" && tail logfile
> > 
> > but then when blah fails, make will not stop, since the return
> > status from echo && tail is a success (assuming the log file
> > exists). How would you return failure and force make to stop?
...
> The short answer is that I cannot believe that we've exhausted all
> options yet.  I want Phil to look into those options; of course I
> welcome any suggestions from people on this list.  But off the top
> of my head, I'd say that we can't possibly say that we're out of
> ideas until we've spent at least 5 hours googling and/or reading
> documentation about make and/or experimenting with make and
> stepmake.

ok, I've got a simple solution which avoids all
bash/sh/make/stepmake confusion altogether: write a simple
(5-line?) python script.  The script is basically just

import sys
cmd = sys.argv[1]
target = sys.argv[2]
status = os.system(cmd+" "+target)
if not status:
    print "Something went wrong!  Look in",
    print target.replace(".ly", ".log")
    sys.exit(1)
sys.exit(0) # success


(not tested)

Now, that's a totally gratuitious use of python... but OTOH, why
not?  We already require python, and we use it for tons of other
stuff... and really, a
  compile-lilypond-book-file-with-warning-about-log.py
script would be *far* easier for casual hackers to read+understand
than all that make and sh garbage.  (ok, the script name is a bit
long, but that's easily thought about)


ok, there we go.  We have a backup plan.  I'm not wedded to the
"small python script" idea, but if all else fails, it will
definitely work.  There might be a better solution out there; I'm
happy to hear alternatives.

Cheers,
- Graham